They say history is written by the winners, but it's written by myth-makers, too—if that's not a redundancy. In recent weeks, while researching a publishing project on the myths of American history, I have combed through an unending supply of stories that, upon closer scrutiny, simply do not hold up, or even add up.
Even the "discovery" and naming of America is shrouded in myth. Although Columbus's myth was thoroughly deconstructed in 1992, the quincentennial of his "discovery" of America, here it is 17 years later and the myth is as strong as ever—government workers even get a day off with pay in his name. Amerigo Vespucci, for whom America was named, published fraudulent letters in his lifetime that inflated his maritime feats, bringing him to the attention of a mapmaker whose clerical error—printing "America" on an uncharted land mass—resulted in our name. Samuel Eliot Morison wrote, "Here's to you, Amerigo. Liar though you were, you made three long transatlantic voyages, wrote entertainingly about them, and played your cards so cleverly as to be elected to the exclusive club of the immortals."
If the very foundations of this nation are constructed on such sandy ground… well, you catch my drift, I hope.
While I was working on this project, two things struck me about this need to create stories out of whole cloth or national heroes larger than events in which they participated.
First, the reality of history is so much more rich and interesting than the myths and lies that too often supplant it. Take Paul Revere's ride. The myth says Revere rode from Boston to Concord to warn the sleeping villagers that "the British were coming!" While it's true Revere made a midnight ride on April 18, 1775, his goal was not to sound a wide alarm. Historian David Hackett Fischer wrote, "Revere's primary mission was not to alarm the countryside. His specific purpose was to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock, who were thought to be the objects of the expedition." Revere was one of three riders sent out from the city for this purpose and after independence was largely forgotten. His myth was created by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere," published in The Atlantic in 1861. Fischer noted, "As an historical description of Paul Revere's ride, the poem was grossly, systematically, and deliberately inaccurate." Fischer's Historians' Fallacies should be a standard reference book for all authors planning to write the history of the Clinton-Bush-Obama years.
Second, the swiftness with which Americans are willing to accept, believe and disseminate myths would be touching if it weren't so dangerous. Take the sinking of the battleship Maine, the immediate cause of the Spanish-American War. The explosion was caused by a fire in the ammunition hold, not by Spanish sabotage. Doesn't matter; we wanted the war, so Hearst sold the sabotage myth to the American people, they quickly bought it hook, line and sinker, and we ended up an empire.
Or take the alleged firing on U.S. troops stationed—provocatively—at the mouth of the Rio Grande River, President Polk's excuse to start the Mexican War; or the roundly debunked Gulf of Tonkin incident which President Johnson twisted to initiate the Vietnam War; or the various excuses used to justify invasions of Latin American countries from Cuba to Granada, or assassinate foreign leaders. The myth of the Iraq war will, no doubt, feature images of Bush with a bullhorn atop the rubble at Ground Zero, Saddam's alleged nuclear stockpile and "Mission Accomplished."
With cable television, satellite radio and the Internet instantly spinning events, the myth-making machinery has never been stronger than it is now. On and on it goes, and where it stops, nobody knows.
